Scoria Roads

'83'

2011-11-30T17:49:00.000-08:00

So this is how it is,
our one life.
She says "I love spring and fall best,
and a light snow."
Flakes fall as she wiggles her fingers
from shoulder to waist.
An old woman can think these thoughts,
who else will know them?

On a warm hillside a crocus wilts into prairie,
tulips and peonies give way,
lilacs too.

Eyes full of life and the promise of death;
a knowing loneliness.
After laughter, after warm smiles,
after remembrances, lives retraced, hot coffee--
afternoon gives way.

Smells of twilight weave in the wind,
cottonwood leaves lose their clamor.

Together three, we walk down the wide block
in the middle of the aged street,
hand upon her shoulder to steady the steps.

At the door, home, I wonder over and over as we hug
if this is our goodbye?

It is a good way to say goodbye,
a good way to say, goodbye.

2010-10-20T18:31:00.000-07:00

Kerouac, coffee and the original scroll

2010-05-25T09:07:00.001-07:00

The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

--Song of the Open Road/Walt Whitman

Rush of wind like water
fresh from east window
soft light, budding trees
sweet LaCoste perfume,
Inspiration.

Wrinkled cotton sheets
sandy brown rhinoceros skin
fall into soft flannel.

Newspaper,
hot coffee, dark roast French press
boiling shower
then,
Kerouac.

----------------------------------

Kerouac.
What you did to stretch your mind, was it worth it?
47-years seems not enough.
What I’d give to talk to you.
Remember apple pie, ice cream and Iowa,
The boys from Minnesota,
Denver and the middle of the night on the way to the coast?
You may have arrived but did you every truly get there?

Air like sawdust, raw road nights, the sun red at three, your poetry is mine.

What you said about “the last thing,” that’s what I think about. We keep trying but we never get it, that’s what you said, right? Hemingway and wineskin's and swimming in the ocean, and eating and making love and sleeping and writing under the shade of great trees in Africa, that must be part of it.

Kerouac.
There must be a softness in this life.
There are comfortable places from my youth. The back of the Charger in somewhere North Dakota, dad at the wheel, mom leaning over the seat to check on me, one window rolled down.

Whitman says he wouldn’t want the constellations any nearer.
I remember the creak of the camper door, bonfire to the left, cottonwood wind, stars and thunderstorms and stories told deep into the night.

Grandma says I’d be crazy to be alone.
I asked if she ever thought of it,
of finding someone again.
She paused.
I don’t know if she feels like crying,
her face and eyes tightened for moments.
“No, I was too old,” she said with a lost look.

Kerouac.
I remember this conversation when, breaking apart,
trying to find the fibers of my soul,
the old priest said
“You are ok now, all there is is the air around you.”
I remember thinking,
nothing can get me but my thoughts,
nothing but my thoughts.

Move, move, move, you are always in motion.
Back and forth across the quilt that is America,
how else would you know red baseball hats are standard
wear for North Dakota farm boys,
or Wild West Week in old Cheyenne,
or a badlands blizzard?

You said everything you’d ever known or ever would know is one,
like the earth and logs and sand that flow from Montana
to the gulf in the life-pulsing Mississippi.

You said there is a purity in motion.
Help me wonder, is there grace in standing still?
Was your life pure being, or was it altered? And what about Neal?
Somewhere comes the voice, “Everything will be alright tomorrow, alright tomorrow.”
It’s always tomorrow.

Kerouac.
They guy playing the alto that night—the guy that got IT, the guy that filled our emptiness with substance…you knew all along, didn’t you?
Our passions are such a fleeting secret.
We all are one.
As you say, “the road is life.”

So in North Dakota when the sun goes down and I sit overlooking the restless Missouri watching the wide sky over the western horizon
and sense all of that raw open land that summons my curiosity
and sense of adventure and I think of all the people in between where I am and where my thoughts end, and in the badlands I know by now the purple-pink sky must be meeting the jagged tops of sage-clay buttes, which is just before nightfall blankets all of us and darkens the Little Missouri and other forgotten places and nobody knows what the next day will bring to any of us besides another day grown old, I think of Jack Kerouac, I even think of his mother alone in that apartment and the son she lost too soon, I think of Jack Kerouac, I think of Jack Kerouac.

Jack—“I cried for all of us. There is no end to the American sadness and the American madness. Someday we’ll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny it’s been. Until then there is a lugubrious seriousness I love in all this.”

Night Run

2010-04-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

While you were watching tv, reading, tucked in
sleeping
I was breathing midnight air.
Legs stretch out ahead
sinful soul pounds pavement
hopes, dreams, lazy lies of the day
escape my mind like
stars moving behind clouds.

Streets abandoned but for the delivery driver,
the hooded figure walking a dog,
stoplights twitching.
I hear my breath, my footsteps, my now quiet conscience.
Two miles becomes four.

On such a solitary night
I feel the hearts of many.
Running in darkness, blurred by shadows,
faceless, nameless, free.

"The smells of ordinariness
Were new on the night drive through France:"
--Night Drive
Seamus Heaney/Opened Ground

Life everywhere is life

2010-03-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

So this is North Dakota.
Cottonwood leaves emerge from melting snow,
elm leaves, meditative pools of water,
viscid mud,
hills numbed brown
sky rife with geese barking for home.

Have you seen the shapes of those leaves?
Perfect scattered puzzle pieces,
prairie carpet.

The river moves south, suspicious brow
raised, water churning rippled with natures sparklers.

Trees remain skeletons-
branched arteries interrupt blue sky
so soon to change.

Meanwhile geese continue in triumph—
wave after wave against feathered clouds,
voices rise up with life and hope.

Do we ever sing this way,
move with such purpose
so sure of where were going?

I know enough to immitate,
to listen,
feel breeze against faded face,
to spot deer tracks
stretch toward the sky
and allow my voice to join
this gallant flat noted symphony of life.

"Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external."
Fyodor Dostoevsky/Letter to his brother Mikhail

The last night

2010-03-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

Six and a half years
flame pouring down his throat
jagged demons fermenting mind, soul.

Fibers of life drown in sadness,
Vivian’s son.
Her shaky fingers flip pages--
lock of hair, ink footprint, baptism,
her boy.

Old blue Ford
Monday night,
took the last during the drive.

Home,
he walks the blackest blue bottom of the sea.
It’s time he says.
A tenebrous cloud looms,
she’s heard this before.

October 6th, 1969. 10:50pm.
Never mind man walked the moon that year,
that lives were lost on foreign shore.
Think instead of a single wildflower growing
out of rock on a high above butte.

Blackness delivers the day
he has lived to tell about.
Listen.
Before that last night, he never drank gin straight.

So to my soul grown old

2010-03-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

Life has found you dear friend,
it has found you and left scars upon your face.
There are wrinkles in your hands,
air feels cooler now-- warmth, warmer.
And about your soul…

Weep though tears don’t come.
The heart feels as much. Blood takes its same course.
Still you smile.

Fused are you love and fear.
Dance together
one holding the other.

I’m beginning to see you again
striped soft terrycloth,
unformed hair, clean eyes, soft grin.
Words you love.
I remember you child.

Go now and dig your fingers into the earth.
Wade into sacred waters.
Sew scars seen and otherwise.

Open pages.
On 303, Alpha dies.
In life fleeing to the last sentence
does not undo sin.

Consider death, life,
faith, disbelief.

How can you imagine the sunrise before it comes
and not see it when it does?
I know, and it will be our secret.

Title:Ezra Pound/In the Old Age of the Soul

"So doth he flame again toward valiant doing."

Return to the Tamarac

2010-02-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

“So now, Beowulf, I adopt you in my heart as a dear son.”--Hrothgar
Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation

My grandma grew up in northwestern Minnesota. Her mother, my great-grandmother, was a city girl moved to the farm.

I have a picture of this place in my mind. Grandma says it was a two-story within walking distance of the Tamarac River. Her bedroom was the top floor. The north facing window looked out on the river. To the west a large window opened inward at the middle like saloon doors. Imagine the sunsets, breezes, stars and thunderstorms that come alive from that view.

Grandma’s company is a safe place when my soul is tired and restless. So is the image of the farm, and the life that went on there. They didn’t eat much beef because grandpa wouldn’t slaughter a cow. He didn’t like the way it trembled for so long after. So that job fell to the boys when they got older. And they seemed to think it ok.

They did have chickens. When grandma was little they took one chick inside the house to help it heal. Grandma says after she had healed and grown and started to lay her eggs she would climb up the steps to the house and lay them inside—right in the same place they had taken care of her.

There was a goose, too. As a gosling it injured its wing. Great-grandma, the city girl, took a needle and thread and sewed up the wound. No kidding. Then she put the goose in with the chickens to help it heal. She feared the other geese would play too rough.

A bond developed. Every morning one hen would walk down to the river with the goose. While he swam, she would walk back and forth pecking away at the shoreline.

They moved the house into Stephen years ago—a new one stands in its place.
The view isn’t the same. I wonder if anyone even notices, and if the thunderstorms smell as lush, and how often in her mind grandma walks down to the river to pace the shoreline before she turns back toward home.

This comes from loneliness

2010-01-12T09:48:00.000-08:00

She says
come with me
you do not want to be
alone.

Desperate her words,
intoxicating her touch.

Siren I will fall for you and follow too
though something inside says turn north
to the great white cleansing wind
and find wisdom to the east where light begins
each day.

My soul locks;
to be loved for now or eternity
passing the sweet tenderness of her lips
to be alone.

Lost, I am no Odysseus
though brave to feel the flame.
Where is your shore oh Ithaca,
where is your shore?

I want, I want, I want--
the eternal human tragedy
skin cut to bone
yet
still we long to bleed.

Two paths,
one trimmed in sunflowers.
Cather whispers...
"it is after all a road to freedom."

Love

2010-01-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

I wonder in this house of words
about the conclusion--
the beginning already written
though don’t think it’s always that way.

Start with a thought.
Watch where ever it takes you.

And patience…
A flake flies against the cold
and frosts a Douglas fir.
That is one thing.

Prairie wind pushing love is another.
Where does it land, and when?
And will it add up to something
or melt away with spring?

There is amazing beauty in this world
against a nervous backdrop.
Look twice and it’s gone--
like that cool pocket of earthy meadow air
last July by the butte.

Can we have it and lose it all
And get it back again?

Christmas 09

2009-12-18T15:49:00.000-08:00

Promises

2009-11-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

Face down in canvas, mouth bloodied,
eyes swollen shut, mind dizzy and aching
sweat and blood pouring against my very breath.
I hear sounds from each direction and feel the flash of bulbs
capturing each their own lashing judgments.

My hand broken, my soul something other
I reach like Michelangelo's creation, a survival instinct so strong
it dips into the being of life, it's first moment,
and I am tied to that bond that pulls me up
though my legs shake and my lungs burn and my weak flesh warms.

In the end an embrace of respect or arm raised, but who wins?
I've lifted twisted body after collapse and know the heavy feeling against my chest.
One thing I'll remember always the single thorned rose set to the side,
a quiet visit and silent honored moment
but it's time to kiss and breathe, smile crooked and bleed again.

"I recall another hazy May,
take a round in the ring,
gone hungry for the win."
--Gregory Alan Isakov/Light Year/This Empty Northern Hemisphere

Death Be Proud

2009-10-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

Sherry. It could be a nurse or his first love. Or someone or something we don't want to know or know about.

He talks racing. He could always make a fast car turn left and hold a tight corner. God knows he turned a lot of roads dusty.

His dry lips mumble as he wrestles thought. Some of it comes from memories so deep inside. Much of it doesn't make sense.

Then it is quiet. His breathing slows.

A few minutes pass. Life stirs, and he remembers those flying lessons and the bumpy country airstrips.

Finally his voice whistles a sound from his childhood. Rope cuts the air--"whew, whew, whew"--a lasso slicing wind. He twirls his finger slowly round. His voice repeats the sounds. The steer doesn't stand a chance.

There are a few more breathes. They are slow and labored.
His eyes gently open wide but somehow it is natural, peaceful.

The clock reads 10:03pm.

For Hadley and Hem

2009-09-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

Take-off is smooth into the autumn morning. A soft darkness circles the plane as it pushes through the clouds. Friendly voices fill the cabin from every direction. They blend with the hum of the engines, which sound like muffled television static after sign-off. The rows are three wide separated by a center aisle.

After an hour of conversation, the man next to me opens a copy of International Archer. He flips through the pages carefully studying the articles, perhaps dreaming of William Tell. Don’t bow to the hat, be your own man. Isn’t that what we all wish in life? His friend next to him drifts to sleep, hands folded on lap, head bent slightly back.

Across the aisle a man reads a paperback. It could be a bestseller. He tilts his neck and head at an angle that points his eyes directly down to the pages in his lap. Flight attendants serve coffee and soda although one passenger wants a little wine. A boy cries in his father’s arms several rows ahead. It is a red-faced scared cry, like he had been woken suddenly and by cold water.

The woman I noticed in the terminal walks toward the front of the plane. Her blond hair falls upon the shoulders of her white cable-knit sweater. It flows straight until it flares like octopus tentacles at the ends. I wonder where she is going, and about her dark haired friend.

Two women in the van leaving Dulles are from France and the Czech Republic. The blond woman from Prague makes easy conversation with the driver. Her long hair is straight and pulls into a clip in the back. Her lips are full and she has several noticeable moles—including one on the center of her chin. Her features are smooth and round, her eyes warm and friendly.

She turns to talk to the woman from Strasborg who sits next to me and is very shy. It is the first time either has been to Washington D.C. Their voices are lyrical. I close my eyes to absorb words and listen to the careful and sometimes broken English phrases. The Czech has an American friend. They will meet tonight. She hopes after the conference she will be able to see the great art and the gardens and the fine statues of Americans along the mall. Like Prague she says, this is a city of history.

Three Australian’s talk wildly in the backseat. There’s been little rain in the south and much in the north. The conversation switches continuously. The man mentions stories about snakes and says Australian Rules football is in its championship run, called the Premiership. The lady says her team is one of four remaining, so she’s paying extra attention. She must be in her 60’s. The man’s voice is happy if happiness can be noticed in such topics.

Hadley, they are not you. I miss your high cheekbones and dimpled chin. I miss your short black hair cut round just under the ear. I miss the hunger and loneliness I feel even after we make love and you sleep soft in the moonlight. You told me there are many sorts of hunger, especially in spring. I miss our walks down by the river and on the rue de Seine where we looked in the galleries and shops and stopped at the café. You said memory is hunger. How I loved your eyes when they knew something.

All those whispered secrets. Remember when we grew our hair the same length? We had such fun with simple things. Shall we return to Austria and climb the mountains to ski, and I can write and you can knit and we’ll be warm from thick blankets and fires and dark drinks? How do we want what we want but want something more? Tell me about 1926 in Schruns and how I found my novel and Brett and Jake. Hadley, it was never your fault.

After the plane and bus I stretch my legs in the city and breathe fresh air. Flowers in many colors bloom in calculated places beside the grand buildings. I walk many streets and across the mall littered with signs. Hundreds of thousands had gathered to protest. The evening is a dying wave in this city of motion.

The clean windows stretch in great lengths from top to bottom and side to side on the downtown corner grill pub. There is a plate filled with pink strips of ahi tuna and salad with light chipotle dressing. The julienned red peppers are sweet. There are mushrooms and fresh, cool cucumbers. I sip from glasses of beer. The first is German style ale. It tastes of dry hops. The second beer is much darker and is bitter then finally sweet. The flavors wash my mouth.

The lights are soft inside and outside the street lamps cast rounded light into the shadows. Now and then a bus floats to a stop outside the big windows. Sounds of horns and sirens penetrate the glass. People cross back and forth in both directions. Two are holding hands.

It seems we have somewhere to go, and nowhere to go at the same time. Hadley, could it be you?

Capitol Grounds

2009-08-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Authentic grace

2009-08-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

Spiny-Toothed Gumweed sticky with pine smell.
Another flower I see but can't name.
Two deer leap from a cornfield.
Brown bodies burst through stalks like machetes.
Run wildly wild hearts.
The sun's golden cast makes the river blue the more.
Two ladybugs each with at least five spots sway on a stamen.
Long shadows and the flow of tall grasses,
crickets and clouds.
So many types of goldenrod.
The river seems to speak but what does it say?
A combine slumbers--a necessary break following
a wet day.
Rough Blazing Star lights up the prairie--
purple spears rise from the earth.
Maximilian Sunflowers tall and top-heavy.
Pointed yellow petals line the roadway.
This walk is alive yet haunts the soul.
For the grip of love we yearn, yet may we fly away free.

The North Unit--Theodore Roosevelt National Park

2009-08-08T21:31:00.000-07:00

One day in July

2009-07-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Sunset at Double Ditch

2009-07-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Elkhorn Ranch

2009-07-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

Aspen

2009-06-05T17:15:00.001-07:00

Lean toward the wind
With each gust, dip and bow for what’s sacred.
Leaves quake and shimmer in this dance--
does anyone notice?

I see arch in your spine
sheer strength where you meet the earth
But what is underneath?

It is the question for all of us.
We see what we see
But what about what we don’t

I’ll breathe your air
and watch you flutter
and wonder what you’re thinking
or if you can.

I know I’m looking at you,
have I considered if you’re looking back ?
What could you be writing?

Honor Flight

2009-05-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

I see soldiers and war in a new way.

Respected North Dakota journalist Eric Sevareid has this to say. “War isn’t slogans and rhetoric and military strategy, and it isn’t scoops. War is people and what happens to them.”

A week ago Brad Feldman and I accompanied around 95 North Dakota World War II veterans to Washington D.C. to visit the memorial built in their honor. Sevareid is right. Even 65 years after combat, war is about people and what happens to them.

The veterans we met grew up all around you and me. They are our neighbors and our friends. They likely played pinochle with your grandparents, helped you change a tire on a country road, and stood tall at the local 4th of July parade.

Our veterans ran farms and built businesses. They married and had children. They helped redefine our nation when they came home, often without fanfare. I heard time and again of a returning soldier getting off the train late at night with a quick greeting from a relative only to be back at work on the farm the very next day. These men and women became the very fabric of America.

So often these heroic stories and efforts have gone unnoticed and unappreciated. Not May 8th and 9th, 2009.

I didn’t know what to expect from this trip. I wondered if seeing the memorial would revive long hidden memories of war and combat. It had the opposite affect.

The trip seemed to be a gentle rain on all souls. After visiting the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean Memorial, the World War II Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and Iwo Jima, the veterans I talked to were all overwhelmed with gratitude. One group visiting the memorial greeted the veterans with tears and thanks. Every now and then a teenager or a stranger would walk up to a veteran and thank him for his service. They were clapped for and cheered for.

Around 60-thousand North Dakotans served in World War II, both men and women. Close to 2-thousand died.

These soldiers are linked to foreign soil, to memories, and to each other. Shakespeare describes the bond in Henry V.

“But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother….”

The most telling, and in some ways haunting reminder of how these veterans continue to identify with the war, is the fact that many of them remember their serial numbers as if they are seared to their souls, even as they approach their 90’s. Much like the convict Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, labeled 24601 in prison and who was weighted down by the association, the veterans will be forever linked to their numbers. The link is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in the camaraderie of serving one anther and a nation with no alternative of turning back. It’s a curse because of the truth of the number of memories they are forever linked to.

And there are lots of numbers. 31 months and seven days says one man. They all know exactly how long they served.

One veteran called me last week, following the trip. He said he’d been waiting 63 years to be welcomed home.

Another veteran told me upon arriving in D.C., “We don’t need a memorial, we came home alive. That is enough.”

He is right and wrong. I thought of the Gettysburg Address as I lived amongst these soldiers for parts of two days, walking in their footsteps, in the footsteps of our living and dying past.

Said Lincoln, “In a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

Whatever we build, say, or do will never be enough.

Sevareid says, “War happens inside a man. I happens to one man alone. It can never be communicated. That is the tragedy—and perhaps the blessing. A thousand ghastly wounds are really one. A million martyred lives leave an empty place at only one family table. That is why, at bottom, people let wars happen, and that is why nations survive them and carry on. And, I am sorry to say, that is also why in a certain sense, you and your sons from the war will be forever strangers.”

Sevareid was right about many things, but I discovered something different after the Roughrider Honor Flight. These veterans, these sons and daughters of the prairie, are no longer strangers, but forever friends.

Thunder

2009-05-11T21:20:00.000-07:00

What is thunder
but a way to remind us hearts beat inside our guarded chests?

Why do the birds go quiet?
And you my friend walk out of the house
to taste the fragrant air.

Count the seconds til it happens again.
Surely inbetween the bell tolls somewhere for someone.
But don’t forget life. You can’t forget life.

It is in us to fail and weep and fall to a knee.
These are black days and sour notes on the Steinway.
Know now there are far more questions than answers.

There is an emptiness.
Some say the prairie is haunting--
a desolate beauty.

Look closely into the draws.
Fix your eyes on the far buttes.
What shapes do you see in the mango-mint horizon?

It all comes and goes. It’s really that simple.
Look into her eyes. There is soul in that guarded chest.
Thunder, come again.

"As always the body wants to hide, wants to flow toward it--strives to balance while fear shouts, excitement shouts, back and forth--each bolt a burning river tearing like escape through the dark field of the other."
Lightning, Mary Oliver
American Primitive

She

2009-05-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

Her beauty
like the rugged hills and icy country draws
is simple, yet resplendent.

Two meadowlarks in a ponderosa pine.
A serpentine sun.
The life trickle of a clear stream.

See the turn in the creek?
Where does it begin and end?
In the field a volunteer sunflower jumps from the soil.
Crack open its stem, smell sky and earth and everything inbetween.

Life is to be noticed.
Sun rising, earth warming
life reaching, breath floating.

Tonight in the garden I think," what if"
and watch the fire lick the smoky air.
The moon looks over all of us.
Tomorrow may she emerge.

Wonders of the heirloom tomato

2009-04-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Last night the sun set tangerine orange. Before Easter we noticed two nights consecutive the moon glow cast the shape of a thick, milky cross. Nature is a glorious beauty.

Today I start my own mini miracles, planting heirloom tomatoes. Their shapes and colors fascinate me.

Just seeds today, some from Gurney's, some from great uncle Bill (one kind known, one kind not). They have great names, like puple cherokee, black krims, and green zebras. These tiny little seeds, sprout up in less than a week. Life begins.

---------

Today my hands smell like tomatoes. I have dirt under my fingernails. It's May 2nd. I've just repotted 25 healthy plants. I can do 50 more. Where do I put them all? After I planted them, I bought special flourescent lights. The guy at the hardware store said he figured I was planting "something else."

The garden is a living, breathing reminder of life and death. From the birth of spring to the adolesense of June to the maturity of August, our hopes rise with the days. We nurture this life the best we can. Most of the time that is enough.

I have only to be reminded of the beauty--their beauty--to know the wait and the journey are worth the sacrifice.

Double Ditch ice jam

2009-03-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

Fox Island ice jam

2009-03-28T15:56:00.001-07:00

August

2009-03-04T17:56:00.000-08:00

This day begins
where the matted deer path wanders into the trees.
Russian Olives shape a thorny moat
dare you enter.

Inside rows of thickets and tall grasses tangle.
Columns of plum trees--fruit green for the season,
chokecherry, buffalo berry and a ripe red early berry
nourish the souless.

Follow along well worn friend,
smell the pine-shadows and junegrass.

Sun spills over tattered earth
from bark branched skeletons
deflecting light.

Silent feathered phantoms speed ahead.
A buck beds down in nature's grandfatherly lap.

This path curves gently
no need for map or compass.

The only questions to this life--
where do you emerge,
and does it matter?

Title: August, Mary Oliver
American Primitive
"In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue."

Dreaming of Medora

2009-03-02T19:52:00.000-08:00

Wade Westin

2009-02-15T15:19:00.001-08:00

Friday a friend to all he met passed away at the much too early age of 34.
You likely knew Wade Westin from the Medora Musical.
Music was a passion. So was family, and North Dakota.
He was a Burning Hills singer for five years. Then he served as host for two years--known fittingly as Gentleman Wade.
Most recently he's held the position of marketing and public relations coordinator for the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation.
But its Wade's character--his kindness, integrity, and class that live on in all who knew him.
He was a spokesman for our state--especially Medora and the magnificent badlands.
He made it a point to live here--and raise his family here.
I was struck by an article written about Wade in North Dakota Business Watch. Someone told him how nice his grandpa was. Wade says he thought--forget fame and fortune, that's how I want to be remembered...as a nice person. Mission accomplished. I know of no finer man.
Our nations second president shares Wade's view of life. John Adams wrote that he recognized at an early age that happiness came not from fame and fortune, "and all such things," but from "an habitual contempt of them."
I got to know Wade through numerous stories and interviews. I had the priviledge of mountain biking with him in the badlands and golfing Bully Pulpit.
Many of us at KX new Wade well. Marci Narum says she'll remember his smile, his warmth--and unassuming charm.
Lauren Kalberer remembers him as caring, kind, and giving.
It didn't matter if you knew him for five minutes or 5 years--in all cases he was genuine.
Brad Feldman remembers a meeting he had with Wade this last August. After the cameras were off Wade took the time out of his hectic schedule to just talk and ask how things were going. He genuinely cared about everyone he met.
Juan Thomas says he was warmhearted and caring. Amen.
Wade's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday morning at 10:30am at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
We already miss you, Wade.
Your wife and children, and families are in our prayers
In the same spirit that you celebrated North Dakota, we honor your life.
Happy Trails.

Thomas Jefferson's Vanilla Ice Cream

2009-01-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

2 quarts heavy cream
1 vanilla bean
6 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar

1. Bring the cream and vanilla bean to a simmer in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir frequently until fragrant--about 5 minutes. Whisk egg yolks in a bowl until smooth and whisk in sugar. Mixture will be thick.

2. Slowly beat about 1 cup of the hot cream into the egg yolks and gradually stir this egg mixture into the hot cream. Cook, stirring constantly until lighly thickened--enought to coat the back of a spoon--about 5 minutes. Strain the custard through a double layer of cheesecloth or a fine strainer--and remove vanilla bean. stir until slightly cooled. Cover and refrigerate until chilled--at least 1 hour or overnight.

3. Freeze the custard in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturere's directions until set but still a little soft. Scoop the ice cream into a 3-quart mold, or several smaller molds, running a spatula through the ice cream and tapping the mold firmly to remove any air bubbles. Fill the molds completely. Cover and freeze until set, about 2-4 hours.

Recovery

2009-01-27T06:13:00.001-08:00

There is no miraculous day.
One bleeds into another,
fibers of the soul clash and tear
and scar and rip and heal.

There is no day to look back upon
and say, "that was it."
It either happens or it doesn't
or you end up somewhere in between.

You can't say Saturday the 14th,
not until twenty or thirty years later
and then what do you know
beyond the air you breath.

People tell strangers
but they don't like to talk to the one's they love
about pain.

Do you know the taste of hot, ladled soup
when it's -44 below?

Life

2009-01-25T07:32:00.001-08:00

Step onto the gray ice.
Is it thick or thin?
Carefully slide toward the horizon.
Ice bubbles, a rough surface.
When did it freeze like that.
3:32am two Thurday's ago?
Nature's photograph.
An icy gunshot reports across the lake.
Souls wake at the sound.
Some have fallen in.
Each step, at least, provides an answer.

A Day at the Farm (1993)

2009-01-10T19:00:00.000-08:00

Grandpa says he lived in this white farm house for some sixty-three years. Time passes and all is not the same, but as we made the turn off of the highway and onto the stretch of gravel, a part of the past came to life.

The fields on this February day are covered with snow, which pleases grandpa. As he says, there is nothing worse than watching your field blow away. The snow cover prevents this nightmare. It also adds needed moisture to the soil.

Somehow I can see him working the fields which were his life and love, as if it were 1950 or 1962 or 1974. I ask him how many hours he thinks he has spent sweating in the summer heat, praying for a good crop. He smiles and says he's wondered that himself.

The sky today is pure and light blue. The winter sun shines brightly on the spring like day. For a long uninterrupted moment, I see myself on grandpa's tractor, I see the black earth stretch as far as my eyes can see. I hear grandma calling me for lunch. I wish for the strength to work a day from dawn til I can no longer see. My friends are my family and an occasional visit from neighbors. The World Series comes to me over a crackling radio, and I must imagine all that I hear. Outside the house are the sounds of the winds and of the thunder, which often last into the night. I see myself look out of the window of the house, which today I can only look into.

The snow makes it hard to get around to the barn and to the old tree where my mother once played on a swing. I make a path so grandpa can join me. I go to the front door because its beauty is magnificent and because I can see the hands of my family open and close it as they did long ago. Grandpa tells me the back door was used most, so I join him back by the bush that is home to the bees during summer months.

On a near window are two thermometers. They must have been looked at and relied upon as much as television and the Weather Channel are today. A rain gauge stands atop a post not far away in the yard. What would have grandpa talked about over breakfast and coffee if not for its ability to count the rain?

I look in one of the windows and see my mother and her sisters around the kitchen table. I wonder how many times they have looked out my way at the fields, into the night. The upstairs windows must have been places to look out at the world and dream. I wonder what has taken me to a place once so full of life?

The barn stands back behind a row of trees. I trudge through the snow to get to it. Much of it is empty, but somehow memories remain. Oil stains an old swather, and sun shines eagerly through a window. This must have been quite a place when it was used so frequently.

As I look over the place with grandpa from our view in the car I feel so much of what must be in his heart and mind. Our two hours fast gone, it is time to return to Grand Forks. Grafton will provide us with a snack and some time to remember more, but it too moves by quickly. I know we will be back again.

Just outside Grand Forks grandpa tells me he never dreamt as a young man that he'd ever meet a woman so kind, intelligent, and warm as Georgia. I smile and say I've wondered myself how I was so lucky that grandpa was so lucky.

All the stories flood my mind as we drive our last mile, and I can no longer remember if 1961 was a year that it snowed a lot, didn't rain enough, or passed without significance. Grandpa seems to remember every year, every day. He tells me of 29 inches of snow in one falling, of politics, people and places. None seem as significant as the one we just visited.

I write my memories as I listen to music from a movie titled Stealing Home. It seems so appropriate. Grandpa writes about the house, "Nothing is as full as a life filled with love." Now I understand why the trip down that gravel road to the fast aging white house came to life so much for me. It is our lives, together, and our love that will stand in those fields and in my mind much longer than the sun will ever rise and set. So I visit the day eighty years ago when it began, and I will never stop going back.

My life

2008-12-11T19:12:00.001-08:00

I have kayaked the Missouri and read Hemingway on a sandbar under the raining hot sun.

I dream of floating from Pick City to Bismarck, camped out overnight along the way. See that old stump fire sparkle in the night from the far hills?

I have read thirty books, but want to count a 100 titles in less than a year. Steinbeck, Cather, Forster, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Oppenheimer. I can start a conversation and talk for two hours about books, ideas, people and places. Erdrich, Bellow, McCarthy, Burton, Speer, and Weizel.

Make that six.

The Elkhorn Ranch is sublime. I love the bend of the river, the jagged buttes, and haggard trees. The beauty of imagination lives in that valley.

Bullion Butte must not escape me. I see it in the horizon. Things must look different from the top. There's Little Heart Butte, and Crown Butte, and the Square Buttes. I must make a list of 10, and cross them off. You will be with me.

Let's sleep on the pontoon, sip wine into the night.

Heirloom tomatoes, such beauty. They will grow in the garden this year. Wait until we slice in September, a juicy kaleidoscope.

Surround yourself with life and I will do the same. Quiver for the quaking aspen, hearts beat for the butterfly bush. Hummingbirds how do you fly backward? I hear you Mary Oliver, words play within me. And oh, cottonwoods in a breeze how you dance with delight.

There is so much to do. Tonight I will turn a page, and then another. The creep toward 100. I'll dream of that sandbar, watching Orion sweep across the blackened sky.

Join me on the boat.

I'll close my eyes, thinking of Lawrence, Eliot, and Rand, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Conrad. Are you smirking Billy Collins? This is only the beginning.

Art, light and life

2008-10-16T18:41:00.001-07:00

I love light, how my eye moves to it in art and in life. I love lights aesthetics and its energy. Like the curve of a smile, I am drawn to it. Like my new favorite painting by Van Gogh (Enclosed Field With Rising Sun), it bursts in my heart and awakens my soul.

I am now most aware of light. It is October, and each day it swings more quickly into the horizon. But in fall light seems extravagant in sight and feel. It frames colorful leaves and ripening apples, and falls softly on fields of golden stubble. Like a cake dripping in chocolate, it is rich in taste and texture.

Light can come unexpectedly. Two clouds part. A trio of quaking aspens filter the shimmering sun by a park. The moon outlines the curves of whitecaps on the river.

Sometimes light comes in the pages of books. I like what Marilynne Robinson says in Gilead about light within light, a flickering candle set in the warmth of a rising sun. I think of my soul within all of humanity.

The other night, the light-soul of life began to creep into the pages of Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow. 'Grun-tu-molani," says a character from an African tribe. It's the desire to live despite challenges faced.

We battle our humanness, looking for light in our lives, feeling our way through darkness. A poet I am reading (Charles Baudelaire) says it's natural for people to fail and lust and envy. He says sinning comes naturally. That is darkness. It is work to be good. Truth and honesty, compassion and hope come at a price. That is light, and light feels so good.

I want to open a favorite red wine, a Mondavi merlot and gently fill my glass. I'll wait for a gripping sunset, one that steals my eyes. I'll stand guard for the perfect occasion, waiting to see the jagged horizon in the distance and feel the wind. Then I'll lift the deep color before me into the light of the sun and fill the red lips of my soul.

How I long to be like the titan Prometheus. I want to steal fire from Zues, and bring light to all lives.

The importance of coffee

2008-08-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

Grandma grew up near the Tamarac River in northern Minnesota. It was seven miles in two directions to the nearest towns, and the only way to get to Stephen or Argyle was by horse or by foot.

She says Bill and Jerry used to build rafts for the river, as most brothers would, but she preferred to swim. Of course the woods were close, too. She remembers the berries. There were chokecherries, juneberries, wild cranberries, plums, one place with raspberries, and some spots with wild grapes. Great grandma Laura used to put the grape leaves inside each jar of pickles. She made the brine, packed in the cucumbers, added a good amount of dill, and put those grape leaves right on top. Through time grandma says she can still taste them.

A lot of things were different back then. They called the old wood stove"Leapin' Lena." Most times the house was too hot or too cold. Many days were used to chop wood for winter. When they stuffed that old stove full of fuel before bedtime, she says you'd as soon break a sweat as you'd catch a chill. By early morning, it was time to pull those old blankets up around her ears.

Great grandma could cook. There was another wood stove that kicked out hot, fresh bread. It wasn't easy to get the right temperature--you had to know just the right amount of wood to put in. There weren't any knobs like today, no "medium" or low, no automatic 350 degrees. But they learned, and grandma says the food was really good, especially summer peas and potatoes with cream from cows they milked.

There was a lot of work to do. It would have been nice not to have those cows on the farm. It was hard to get away, hard to take any time off. She says they were kind of chained to the place. She says, "I can milk a cow alright." Life wasn't easy. She says great grandma told her she would go off to school because she wouldn't have her staying on any farm when she got married.

She left home for schooling in town in 9th grade. She lived with her dad's parents Mary and Pat during the week. Grandma would go home on weekends. But those seven miles were just too much to cover on a daily basis by horse and buggy. Mary and Pat lived in Stephen. Life stayed that way until she graduated.

In 1940, grandma Vivian moved to Grand Forks to go to the beauty school. She lived with her aunt Rose--great grandma Laura's sister. It was the Hairdressers Ball that changed her life.

In walked Raphael. He had another date that night, but grandma noticed him. In fact she says, he called her later that night. She says she noticed him at church, too. He always used to walk in late, and head right up to the front pew. Grandpa knew how to make an entrance. Ralph finished three years of school at the University of North Dakota before the war called. They were married in 1943 in Joplin, Missouri, where he went for training.

While the two were dating and grandpa was in the service, grandma did something most remarkable. She moved to Seattle with her friend and worked in the shipyards. In months she went from beauty school to welding school. She welded rivets into the great naval ships of the sea to aid the war effort. Because of her height, or lack of it, she says she was sent into the tightest corners of the ships. She and her friend worked the midnight shift because they were able to earn more money. They lived with her friends sister, but moved back to North Dakota after a handful of months when illness struck her friends family back home.

Life got pretty crazy in 1945. We were in the middle of a war, my grandpa was in the Army, and my grandma found out she was pregnant. A couple months later, grandpa Ralph was on his way to the east coast to join the conflict in Germany. But orders changed after the German surrender, so grandpa was shipped all the way to the west coast to ship out to the Philippines. He told grandma half the guys got sea-sick before they left the Golden Gate Bridge, but he was able to hold his own.

En route, on August 6th 1945, President Truman ordered an atomic bomb (Little Boy) dropped on Hiroshima. On August 9th, a second bomb (Fat Man) was dropped on Nagasaki. My grandfather never saw combat. I wonder if that changed my life. My dad was born while my grandpa was in the Philippines.

Grandpa still had to do some work overseas. He was first in the post office in the Army. Then it was stint with the military police, before he finally moved on to work in the hospital. Grandma says he gave shots and "sewed up people that were stabbed."

Grandpa first saw his son when he was seven months old. It must have been strange walking in from war. Grandpa brought some things back from the Japan. There was that gun that hung in the basement for many years, a kamono for grandma and another for great grandma. He also brought some dishes, and a saddle for great uncle's Bill and Jerry. The gun is the only thing still around. Shawn took it when grandma moved. He looked up the serial number online and found out where it came from.

Grandma says they moved to Bismarck in 1945, when my dad was eight months old. They lived in a trailer house by the river, near the current Memorial Bridge. They moved several more times, including finding places and neighbors grandma really liked on Griffin Street and Assumption Drive. They finally moved into the house I know--1616 N 18th Street. She remembers it was close to Thanksgiving. Dad says 1965. It's a place grandma called home for 43 years. Grandpa wasn't as fortunate. He died in 1977. My favorite memory is the day he pulled up in front of the house with a shiny new apple red Lund fishing boat. Grandpa finished the basement in that home. He always had a hammer in his hand.

When I think about that house, and I think about it often, I remember malted milks, icy cold kool-aid in sweaty glasses in the garage. I think of the weeping birch I used to watch sway in the backyard, its rhythms and shadows casting me into afternoon trances. I think of sneaking out of bed and down the hall with cousin Jim to watch Johnny Carson. Relatives played pinochle for quarters, and there was all the laughter. I think of vegetable soup that no one else can make quite right. Of course there were dozens of cookies, and carmel rolls and homemade doughnuts with chocolate frosting. And we ate Cocoa Wheat's and cereal with half & half. Everything got a healthy dose of butter. At night we slept with the windows open and listened to the soothing sound of traffic on Divide Avenue. And I'll never forget the Thanksgivings and Christmas's and the thick brown gravy and piles of presents.

We were exploring Bismarck sipping coffee as grandma shared these memories. She likes to go for drives. She always says things have changed a lot since she first moved to town.

Eventually, I had to drop her off in her new apartment. Over the summer we moved her from that wonderful house on 16th Street. Found out her birth certificate says her first name is really Mary, and her middle name Vivian. "Must have been a mistake," she says.

The other night I saw for the first time a glow of light coming from grandma's north facing bedroom in her old home. Someone's moved in. It seemed strange at first knowing those walls hold the hopes and dreams of new lives. What will their memories be? I have a safe place for mine.

The move is quite a change for grandma and there's been a flood of memories. I wonder how she'll adapt. I wonder how often she thinks of the juneberries and the steaming-hot fresh loaves of bread. I wonder how often she thinks of her mother, her brother Jerry, and those wonderful pickles. Today she still swims. I wonder how often she remembers the waters of her first home, near the Tamarac River.

Good Earth

2008-08-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Our first tomato is turning from green to orange on its way to red. The site gives me a thrill. It came on unexpectedly. One night green, the next morning the transition is underway. It's August 11th.

I meant to keep a journal of our backyard. Candace and I transformed it into something of our own. Watching its progress is a daily engagement. I feel the desire to know what we planted and when. I want to quantify the rich fruits of our labor, to count tomatoes and beans and peppers.

We decided on an early June Saturday to till a piece of earth on a whim. It is something we had thought about often but hadn't acted upon. Why go through the work when I felt with certainty we would move from this place? I also wondered if a garden would get enough light sandwiched between our house and the towering pines.

Our friend Clay gave us the ok to grab his tiller. Later that day we added peat moss and fertilizer and compost and bags of rich, black top soil. We tossed away clumps of mulched tilled grass and picked out stubborn roots from the pines.

Candace marked off perfect rows with several wooden posts at each end while stretching pieces of taught twine in between. She did much of the planting. There are thirteen tomatoes of various origins, green peppers, hot peppers, peas, beans, cucumbers, onions (red and white), radishes and lettuce.

I cherish the architecture of vines and leaves. It is exhilarating to see beans sprout through the earth as if they were waking after a night of sleep, the way I might raise my fisted hands from my feet to far above my head in a slow single motion. The radishes were quick, but too thick to grow bulbs. Too few of the onions sets caught on. Heartache.

The lettuce is grand and delicious. I venture to guess we have harvested three dozen bowls of the crisp, refreshing leaves and still they sprout. The cucumbers started slowly but began their feisty crawl during the early part of August. If only I knew the day I saw the first fruit.

Candace was the first to snap a pea pod and taste the luxury of its contents. The beans flowered and then came in waves toward the end of July. The yellow petals of promise on the tomatoes showed early and often, and now the plants are staked to tall mahogany wooden posts to help hold the hope-filled weight. The smell of the vines is therapeutic.

I went back in the garden tonight, in the dark with a small light. I lost count of the tomatoes at 130. I know there's at least another score.

There's so much to tell. I want to share with you the climbing vines, the roses, the butterfly bush, and how we want to attract hummingbirds. I want to remember it all, for all time.

The river runs through me

2008-07-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

Have you ever dreamt of being alone on an island with the sun shining on you while holding your favorite book? It happened to me today, and I had Hemingway.

I put the kayak in north of Bismarck. It was my first trip down river, past places I'd been many times in a boat.

Things look a lot different close to the water. You feel bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger for experiencing nature in this way, smaller for realizing the world is a big place and you're one wave away from swimming in current. It is good to feel small, a minuscule part of something so sweepingly beautiful. It's like the sand on my favorite beach north of where the Heart flows into the Missouri, one speck in a trillion. When I fall into its luxury I scoop up handfuls of it and let it fall back down, my fists forming a human hourglass.

My maiden journey reminded me a little of the Old Man and the Sea, I hooked to some great fish leading me away. "Take me somewhere," I thought about the kayak. "I want to see things I've never seen, I want to feel things I've never felt."

The word harmony is on the end of our paddle. I loved that there was no noisy, smoking engine. I could hear the kayak cut into the river as it moved forward, the trickles of water off the oar. Nothing interfered with the bird songs or the whispering wind.

A half hour after I started, I stopped at a sandbar in the middle of the river. The cool water was welcome relief from the heat. I sat down in it and splashed it up on my face and back. I drenched my hair. I watched some boats go by and I tried to remember the paths they took. When I cooled down, I circled the small island, maybe 35 yards long. The rippled sand felt good underfoot. I found a dry spot in the middle and, using my life jacket as a pillow, opened For Whom the Bell Tolls. Robert Jordan is planning the bridge attack during the Spanish Revolution. He has a trusted friend in Anselmo. He is in love with a perfectly imperfect woman, and a great snowstorm has struck. All this from an isolated island in the middle of the Missouri River on a 90 degree day near Bismarck, North Dakota.

I return to the water along the east shore. Two guys ask me where I started. "Up north near Double Ditch," I tell them. "That's a good day," they reply in stereo, raising their Mountain Dew bottles to toast my adventure.

I am told for a peaceful voyage to stay away from the main channel and take the shallow, narrow tributary-like route behind Christmas Tree Island. It is good advice. For maybe two miles I oar and stop and float and oar and stop and listen. The sun beats down on my brown arms. I see a bald eagle. There are many switchbacks and I learn to read shallow water along the way.

There's Grant Marsh bridge. A couple dozen people are walking up onto the riverboat. Above, traffic races both east and west along I-94.

The kayak gracefully turns the corner from the main river channel to the boat ramp. I wonder what people think of me. Perhaps I started in Montana, a man with a gypsy heart and a book and somewhere to go. Or maybe they think I'm crazy, or brave, or out of place.

With the vessel loaded onto my shoulder, I walk up to a park bench. I stretch out and read more pages. Candace pulls up with the pickup. She brings refreshing cold peaches and a half can of Diet Coke.

It is good to be on my way home, yet still I think of the river.

Double Ditch at Sunset (2008)

2008-07-14T21:09:00.000-07:00

This time I laid my body down in the grass. I found one of the many ditches dug over 200 years ago by the Mandan Indians and eased to the earth on a slant. I dropped my head on a thick biography of Thomas Jefferson and looked to the sky.

My hands rested on my forehead with my elbows up. They combined to frame the blue sky above. The architecture of prayer. I stared at it for minutes. It was such a soft color I began to see sunspots in my eyes. I knew Crown Butte was straight in front of me, Square Butte was to my right, and a 3/4 moon to my left. The prairie wind welcomed me in pulses, gusting here and there across the brown stubble. I live by heart. I hoped nature would rain on my soul. This is a place you'll find me.

At one time it's estimated 10,000 Mandan Indians lived here. It started around 1490. I wondered about them, great planters of the prairie. They raised corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco. They dug ditches by hand for protection and women built the earth lodges. What magnificence. Buffalo were abundant as were fish and birds. The river provided fresh water and the high hill a majestic view of in three directions.

I think it's the humanity that draws me here. On this ground they lived and loved and fought and ate and played and discovered and learned and gave birth and died. Life advanced. So did time.

By 1785 Double Ditch was abandoned. A small pox epidemic wiped out much of the population. Perhaps 1200 were left by 1800. When Lewis and Clark came through on 22 October 1804, they noticed several deserted villages.

I sat up from my book pillow. The sky around me changed as the sun eased into the horizon. Clouds formed like wispy purple-blue ghosts far from the sun. Soft pink settled gently in-between. I fixed my eyes on the flaming mango-orange sunset. Ordinary turned sublime. It is one of the stories of my North Dakota.

Sixty-four colors

2008-07-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

Candace and I drove up to Double Ditch a couple weeks back with the intention of writing, reading, soaking in the sunset, the sounds of prairie grasses, and the history. We had to arm wrestle Riley into coming with us.
It is sacred ground--no doubt--deserving of respect. But this is not always easy to do when trying to appease a 7 year old. That meant a stop at Wendy's on the way out to get chicken nuggets and fries, a southwest salad, and a spicy chicken sandwich.
So we pull into the circular drive, gather our things, take the paved path out to the blue bench and plop down. By now we have violated just about everything Clay Jenkinson mentioned in his recent Tribune article! But I think maybe we have achieved a balance of being able to enjoy the landscape, the sweet air, the caress of the breeze, and the symphony of crickets and grasshoppers mixed with the crunch of fast food bags, the odor of greasy fries, and the slurp of a fast melting frosty.
It was good for about ten minutes. Quiet was just settling in , the soul of the place was weaving into our minds and hearts, the taste of the air was replacing that of the spicy chicken and chili--when Riley informed us he had "to go."
So the sun didn't set on us from the beautiful buttes as we had planned. We didn't get a chance to fall into the grass and look up into the heavens, we didn't open Mary Oliver--Orion did not start his creep from eastern horizon to west. Instead we gathered our stuff, left the sun hanging like a family picture on a wall, and scurried back into Bismarck.
The thing is, the trip was beautiful in its own right. Far from perfect. Far from expectations. Far from simplicity. But beautiful. No doubt Crayola is jealous of North Dakota skies--hard as they may try, the colors can only be matched by the memories they burn into my mind. Each night when I lay down, I review these fleeting sunsets hoping they drift into my dreams. I see the colors again as I want to remember them, and am glad in my imperfection to be a North Dakotan, a husband, a father, and a friend.

To myself

2008-05-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

I am
laughter
on a good day,
kind and thoughtful.
I read obituaries--
my heart fills with
sorrow and pride
for lives lived.
It's as good as any of us can do
sometimes
to get through the days.
But when it's over all lives
could be great movies
because they have joy and pain,
dreams and hopes,
success and failure.
These souls saw colors of sunsets,
so many colors who could
pick a favorite?
Fire flies, stars shooting, a rainbow.
Little wonders.
Hear the prairie thunder--
it could be July or August against Orion's
midnight sky of black.
Some painted in watercolors or
told great stories around crackling campfires
by any lake anywhere.
Have you ever felt wind
so strong
it takes your breath?
Courage, honor
tradgedy, failure.
Walt fought in the war.
Georgia was a poet.
Ralph lost his sunglasses
in an outhouse
then tried to fish them out
with a daredevil.
Laura loved me.
Delores danced.
Odie gambled.
Who would have known?
These wild lives
fill me
with a crooked smile
that says you lived, all of you lived
and I will too.
On a good day,
I do more
than dream.

Word dancing with my daughter

2008-05-02T21:10:00.000-07:00

I remember the day she was born. I cried, and said, "She's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen." My mom wiped tears away and softly agreed. "I know."

It was a wondrous Friday in September.

Now here we are, twelve years later, sitting on the couch in our living room. It's past 10 but before 11. We're lost somewhere in between, reading poetry by Mary Oliver. We wander through her prayerful love of nature and her attentiveness to life. We like Sleeping in the Forest, The Sunflowers, and Sunrise. We read several more, taking turns. As she talks, I close my eyes. She skates across the words as if on clean ice. Her voice is strong, intelligent, and thoughtful. She is all things and more.

We come to First Snow. I'm reading now, quietly so we don't wake anyone.

"The snow/ began here/ this morning and all day/ continued, its white/ rhetoric everywhere/ calling us back to why, how,/ whence such beauty and what/ the meaning; such/ an oracular fever! flowing/ past windows, an energy it seemed/ would never ebb, never settle/ less than lovely! and only now,/ deep into night,/ it has finally ended./ The silence/ is immense,/ and the heavens still hold/ a million candles; nowhere/ the familiar things:/ stars, the moon,/ the darkness we expect/ and nightly turn from. Trees/ glitter like castles/ of ribbons, the broad fields/ smolder with light, a passing/ creekbed lies/ heaped with shining hills;/ and though the questions/ that have assailed us all day/ remain--not a single/ answer has been found--/walking out now/ into the silence and the light/ under the trees,/ and through the fields,/ feels like one.

I get to the end and we begin to ask questions. We start to pull apart the poem with care and gentleness. There is joy in defining the subtle flavors of words and rhythms.

"Oracular," we wonder? Divinely inspired, ambiguous, reads dictionary.com.

A million candles. Beautiful. Micaela says, "Maybe she means the stars." I'm startled by the ease of her answer. Is she 12, or 21? By reading on, we think it's something else.

Maybe she's talking about glittering snowflakes aloft in the heavens of the night. Knowing, not knowing, thinking and sharing is delicious.

We go on. "Trees glitter like castles of ribbons..."that's good," we both say.

And the broad fields smolder--I love it. "What does smolder mean," asks Micaela. "It's like when you pour water over a fire and the smoke and steam overtake everything near," I say, using my hands to show the magnitude. "Oh, yeah," she says. "She's really good."

There's more.

"Questions that have assailed us all day/remain--not a single/answer has been found--"/

The word "assail" springs like an arrow from a bow. It seems the awe of nature has invaded Oliver's soul, yet show knows no answer for her feeling.

Then the poem takes a dramatic turn and ends gently, like a big feather-filled snowflake falling from the sky onto one of its own.

walking out now/into the silence and the light/under the trees,/and through the fields,/feels like one.

There is an answer.

We hustle back to the beginning.

We feel the strength in words the poem begins with--white rhetoric, oracular fever, an energy it seemed would never ebb. Then she dips her brush to change the color of the language--the silence is immense, trees glitter, broad fields smolder, and heaped with shining hills paint vivid pictures in our minds and hearts.

Then the exquisite transition before she ties it back to the beginning--the bold questions of why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning.

And the haunting--not a single answer has been found--

But then she steps outside the walls of her home and heart, where nature's beauty holds her captive. "walking out now into the silence and the light under the trees and through the fields, feels like one."

We go back to the beginning at least three times more and start again until our thirst is satisfied.

As we say goodnight, I think to myself, "She is a beautiful young woman." I hear my mom whisper, "The most beautiful."

A prayer to light

2008-05-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

All the weight to hold, I hold unto me.
Heart heaved
against wind and will
shadows cast crookedly
against my soul.

Staggered, drunk, dizzy
midnight covers dawn
there seems no light to see.

Lifted by grace
hope soflty shines
and this weight let go
is no longer me.

Moments

2008-04-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

I saw an old couple today
probably in their 70’s or 80’s
in a gold Buick.
My glance caught them
debating a grocery flyer
shiny and creased.
They were looking at the meat section
pot roast, steak, bacon
it was 4:08 at a stoplight
Divide and State, cloudy, warm, breezy.
I saw a glance of green
and turned without thinking.
Suddenly they were left behind.
Gone.
She had curly hair and rimmed glasses
and looked intense.
He was attentive—both hands on the wheel.
Silent.
Five blocks later
down the hill and to the right
I still wonder what they’ll have.
When your days are numbered,
I say eat steak.

Walking with Roosevelt

2008-04-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

There is a direct connection between the history and landscape of North Dakota, and the very soul of who I am. Walking along the Missouri River, through the badlands, or atop the thick black soil of the Red River Valley, I often stop, close my eyes, and wonder who's walked there before me.

On these days, I find my thoughts drifting away through Dakota's history, as if caught be a gusty northwest wind, carried purposefully from place to place across the prairie.
Some days I'm sitting around a campfire with the Corps of Discovery, writing in my journal, chewing away at the days adventures.

Other times I'm running cattle in the badlands, sipping coffee black enough to jump-start a dead mans heart, or celebrating with a shot of forty-mile red eye.

There are times I see my grandpa working eighteen hour days to get the crop in, or out. I smell the fertile Red River earth, see him pick up a handful of dirt, and watch it fall heavily to the ground between his weathered fingers. Sweat coats his face, soaks his shirt.

There is no place like North Dakota. You cannot walk the land and not feel her presence. Winter winds whip your face while the summer sun tans it. Always you feel very much alive. Your heart pounds with the excitement of a flying pheasant, the wind whistles in your ears as it wraps unsympathetically around your face, and a cold winter day put a sting in your fingertips. In many cases, North Dakota awakens an unquenchable spirit of adventure.

From time to time I dash off into the heart of my dreams. I was at one of these places not long ago, the site of Theodore Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch. It lies in rugged, remote territory some 35 miles north of Medora. The land remains much as it was 100 years ago. As I slip between some fence posts and onto an old, beaten, trail to reach the place, my imagination slips into history. I'm walking with Roosevelt.

His pace is nearly too quick to follow. Like the spirit of the badlands, I am lifted by his strength, character, and courage. Although he first came to hunt, he writes, reads, and heals. Black-care will not catch us today.

I trudge further down the snowy, sometimes icy trail, breaking into small pools of wintry water. It is, of all things, a 60 degree January day. A beautiful clearing emerges slightly west of the banks of the Little Missouri.

I close my eyes and hear Bill Sewall, the ranch foreman, and Wilmot Dow cutting giant cottonwoods. They are experienced woodsmen, and friends. TR cannot keep pace. The rugged pair make quick work of over 100 trees today, while the boss is only able to “beaver down seventeen.” I imagine hearty laughter as Roosevelt realizes his is no match for the two men from Maine. The Elkhorn takes shape.

My mind skips ahead, and winter turns to spring; the ranch is complete. On his beloved horse Manitou, Roosevelt crosses the Little Missouri, shallow, earthy water splashing up around him as he heads off to hunt. I struggle to catch him as he reaches the top of a butte. These badlands are a strangely compelling place that captured and mended his lion-heart, a place so magnificent they won't leave you.

He moves with conviction, after buffalo, elk, grouse, deer, and other wild game. He is off to Wyoming, Montana, sleeping in two inches of rain, braving cold so bitter he seeks shelter in an old shack in the dark of night to survive. He feels alive.
He captures boat thieves, knocks out a loud-mouth drunkard, shoots a grizzly square between the eyed (all twelve hundred pounds of him), and stands toe to toe with the sharp-shooting, confident Marquis.

He rides through starry nights and purple-pink sunsets. He tells stories, eats well, and shares laughter. He reads, writes, and checks the herd. There are pictures to take, and fences to mend, and wrongs to right. But we must return to the ranch.

Sitting on the veranda, dazzling shades of orange, pink, blue, and yellow gently fade into the sky, reaching in stark contrast to meet the tops of sharp, sometimes rolling and jagged buttes. There are stars bright in the sky, darkness in the valley, thick sweet smells of wild earth, and burning coal mixed with sage. Roosevelt slams another book shut. The rocking chair creaks against the weathered floorboards. He reaches up to remove his spectacles, and rub the top of his nose with his thumb and index finger. Another day is gone, and although he will soon leave this place, it will never leave him.

In the distance, a restless deer breaks the silence. It snaps my mind back to the present, and I turn back to the trail. My soul is refreshed.

Why Scoria?

2008-04-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

I have always been fascinated by trips through southwestern North Dakota. The landscape is one to wrestle with, rugged and tempting, lonely and intimidating.

From time to time, there is an unmistakable feature you'll see carving its way across hills and around buttes. "Scoria" is the rusty colored rock that paves the way to many farms and ranches. The scoria roads look their best after an early evening rainfall, with the backdrop of deep-blue thunderheads marching to the east, while golden sunlight slips in behind from the west. Like light in a good painting, the scoria on the prairie catches the eye.

The North Dakota Geological Survey says the stone is called "scoria" locally, but is actually referred to as "clinker." You tell me what sounds better. Scoria" is sandstone, clay, or shale baked by burning lignite coal.

After passing through western Dakota in 1864, General Alfred Sully called the badlands "hell with the fires out." He wasn't the only one who noticed. Scoria also caught the attention of Lewis & Clark.

Said Clark, "Saw an emence quantity of Pumice Stone on the sides & feet of the hills and emence beds of Pumice Stone near the Tops of them, with evident marks of the hills having once been on fire. I Collecte Somne of the different sorts i.e. Stone Pumice & a hard earth, and put them into a funace, the hard earth melted and glazed the others two and the hard Clay became a pumice Stone glazed."
On April 16, 1805, Lewis wrote the following:
"I believe it to be the strata of coal seen in those hills which causes the fire and birnt appearances frequently met with in this quarter. where those birnt appearances are to be seen in the face of the river bluffs, the coal is seldom seen, and when you meet with it in the neaghbourhood of the stratas of birnt earth, the coal appears to be presisely at the same hight, and is nearly of the same thickness, togeter with the sand and a sulphurious substance which usually accompanys it."

If you google scoria, you'll find it's really volcanic rock. It comes from the Greek word σκωρία, skōria, rust.

I love the thought of our journey through life, upon a fiery road, not knowing what's around the next corner. Scoria stands out among the golden-brown fields of the badlands, as if it's leading to a promise of something better along the way.

Honoring the fallen

2008-04-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

June 6th is my birthday. It's also the day North Dakotan's Travis Van Zoest and Curtis Mehrer died serving their country. They lost their lives in 2006 in Afghanistan.

I'm thinking about them today because of a story I am working on. The All Veterans Memorial on the state capitol grounds honors our fallen soldiers. It was dedicated June 10th, 1989, during our state centennial. On the bronze tablets are names of 4,050 soldiers who gave their lives during our first 100 years of statehood. The problem is, around 200 of those names are mispelled, others were missed (though few), and those from the current conflict are absent.

The 2007 legislative session provided a ray of light. $100,000 dollars was tucked into the Facility Management budget to make things right. The hope was to replace all the panels with proper corrections in time for Veteran's Day, 2008.

Today comes bad news. The price of precious metals is so steep, the project may have to be put on hold. Instead of $100,000, the state now needs $280,000. The price of each panel has skyrocketed from $1,500 to $5,500. The worst case scenario is the 2009 legislative session will be called upon to authorize the difference. It would be a shame to wait that long.

The state has a budget surplus of $200 million, and other reserve funds totaling $400 million. We need to do what's right for our fallen soldiers. The money needs to be found, and found now. These men gave their lives for our country. Van Zoest and Mehrer never got the chance to celebrate their 22nd birthdays. It's the least we can do.

There is another consideration. Soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan may have to wait longer before their names are bronzed. Because of the cost invovled, and the possibility others could lose their lives, those who've fallen in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom may have to wait until the conflits are resolved.

I talked with Van Zoest's mom today. She says the names need to be included immediately. Sheila Richter lost a son June 6th, and all she wants is for his memory to live on in the hearts and minds of those who live. In my mind, and my heart, one cost cleary outweighs the other.

Becoming a great "North Dakotan"

2008-03-31T21:38:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of talk about what North Dakota isn't in the news lately. I guess the state appears empty to most of those outside of it, and quite honestly, even to many residents within its borders. The whole idea of North Dakota being a boring place has gnawed at me since I was young. To some extent, it seems like we spend a lot of time trying to make ourselves something we are not.

I remember when I was in college, the mayor at the time wanted to build a waterfall by River Road in Bismarck. There's also the idea of dropping "North" from Dakota. The argument is to change outside and inside perceptions. Sarcastically I suggested in the student newspaper a retractable dome be placed over the state. I say it's time to embrace what we are, and what we have. It does get cold here, no matter how the tourism brochures try to alter reality. The wind blows. Temperature differences can be extreme, and in a short amount of time. So what? Don't people like challenges? How about scaling Devils Tower, climbing Everest, or competing a triathlon?

The truth is, North Dakota is prime, sublime territory for those who are adventure minded. I think if we want to change outside perceptions of who we are, we need to start on the inside. I propose a plan of action, something to stimulate average, everyday North Dakotan's to get off the couch and learn more about our history and our future. Kind of a "you have to love yourself before someone else can love you" type of thing.

If we are concerned about the future of the state, we had better act now, investing in our youth. If they grow up embracing North Dakota, they are more likely to stay, open a business, start a family, and eventually reach out to others about visiting this place. I want to build a base of "Great North Dakotan's."

I'm taking ideas for lists of buttes to climb, books to read, and places to visit. I want to hear about your adventures, see your photos, read your writing, and be stimulated by your thoughts. I've kicked around a few ideas with family and friends. Right now the idea and its parameters are limitless. As I carry the weight of 37 3/4 years on my back, I know two things. It's time to get started, and it's never too late to get started. I hope to see you along the way.

Finding Abe

2008-03-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what books can do. Words really open doors. I've started reading a lot again. In the past few months I've finished "Snow Upon the Desert," "Gilead," "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," My Antonia," "Giants in the Earth," and "Team of Rivals." My mind is now wandering around in "Theodore Rex." I am excited to open the pages of "1776" and "Jon Adams." There are many more. I am excited by titles and frustrated by lack of time.

I literally feel alive. When I close the pages, I can feel the stimulation in my head--the throb of learning. The books I've read have awakened my senses, revived a tired spirit, given me hope, and touched my heart. I'm sorry I waited so long to meet Abe Lincoln. Never have I read of someone so real, so intelligent, so compassionate, so honest. He's a modest hero who helped define equality in flesh and bone, and not just on paper. Lincoln was a man with vision, extraordinary patience, and the ability to work with friend and foe alike.

I also relate to the mood of "Giants in the Earth," the landscape, and the character Per Hansa. Life isn't easy. Some days I'd like to walk out on my job, eyes pointed to the west, always west. The more I learn about those who settled our state, the more I respect them. There's a lot of sorrow in the story. There's also depression and tragedy. Yet somehow I came away deeply touched. I know I feel broken at times, desperately lonely, and down on myself. But much like the characters, through grace I find the strength to pick myself up.

It's been a long winter for me. I'm ready for the rebirth of spring. I've got a lot to look forward too. There are many new pages to turn. I like when I slip my book-mark in for the night, and close my eyes. Like globes in a lantern, I can feel the glow in my head. These books have given me a lot of good things to think about. I think I know a little more about who I do and don't want to be. And somehow, reading Roosevelt and Lincoln and characters less in name, I find a little courage to go out into this world. This afternoon, the wind demanded to be recognized by all across this western prairie. But then a remarkable thing happened. Steel blue clouds crept in ominously from the northwest. They brought a gentle rain. We cracked some windows. The trees fell silent. Life feels refreshed.